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Saturday, 15 March 2014

B'ode to a Grecian Urn.

In Ireland we accept brave defeats. We tolerate constant underachievement.
We never ask the difficult questions that need to be asked; why can we never
take the next step?

Two men bucked this trend, one more successfully than the
other. Roy Keane and Brian O’Driscoll’s public image couldn’t be further apart.
Brian O’Driscoll is Blackrock, blonde locks, Adidas; Roy Keane Mayfield,
psychopathic skinhead, Diadora.

Both men however shared a complete aversion toward defeat;
both men possessed a forceful will, a need even, to avoid defeat, to lead the
weak to the pinnacle.

The arguments over which of the two titanic personalities is
Ireland’s greatest sportsperson is undoubtedly moot; the only thing more
difficult than comparing athletes across eras is comparing them across sports.

Keane played the far more competitive, global game of
football compared to rugby, a plantation sport. In terms of difficulty rugby is
streets behind. For a start you can hold the ball in your two hands, the most
human of traits. Australia’s Chris Latham, a World Cup winner and one of the
finest full-backs of the last fifteen years, only took up the sport while in
college at 18.

That is part of the reason for the Irish thirteen’s
greatness though. Keane made a complicated game easy, but the boy from Clontarf
slot into the most feral of sports and sprinkled magic every time he stood on
the pitch. He was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus scribbled onto the back of a cubicle door in a seedy pub.

He regularly dropped our jaws with moments of inspiration (tragically,
often in defeat). In Perth during the 2003 World Cup he fit perfectly into the
corner like a postage stamp after evading the quarter man, three-quarters cyborg
winger Wendell Sailor. He twinkled his way through the world champion (Qantas) Wallabies
in Brisbane with the Lions in 2001. He constantly sidestepped French full-backs
before touching down under the posts, released new, unimaginable offloads from
his sleeve with such regularity it rendered them normal. He could find a straight line down a packed Grafton Street. The RDS never
saw Maradona, but it did see O’Driscoll juggling the ball over the line against
Wasps while he was turning Leinster into the most formidable dynasty of European
rugby (essentially a toddler, but still). He even passed the ball to himself once.

His talent was only half the story though. When Ireland
needed him he duly obliged. Shane Horgan says when Ireland toured the southern
hemisphere they became “O'Driscoll and 14 other muppets”. The All Black’s (probably
correctly) saw the touring Lions of 2005 as 66 muppets and O’Driscoll, so Tana
Umaga and Kevin Mealamu removed him with the ruthlessness of Stalin and Beria. The
Dubliner once cut short medical treatment to haul the 6’1’’, 235 pounds frame
of Marcus Horan to the ground. Not only is BOD or Drico Irish rugby’s greatest
ever 13, he’s the best 7 the country has produced too.

Cowardice wasn’t the motive behind clutching back the natty
dreadlocks of George Smith, the pragmatism his teammates often lacked but O'Driscoll had in abundance was. “You
came to the pitch as a second-class rate Newton Faulkner so this is fair game”.
The captain was the catalyst of the golden generation’s sole career Grand Slam.
He crossed the line in four of the five games; was the jump leads needed after
half time in Cardiff, drop-goaled against England before scoring a priceless
try two minutes after it looked like he would be substituted following a late Delon
Armitage hit.

But frankly, for a player of his calibre, with a more than
capable side cast, one championship is a negligible return. World Cups brought disappointment;
you could argue the landscape of Irish rugby is exactly the same as it was
before he exploded onto the international scene fourteen years ago. A second
championship is required for the O’Driscoll era to stick out to a scanning eye
looking through the Six Nations roll of honour. A second championship is
essential to shake off the nearly-men tag the country's rugby team wear without the disdain they should.

The sporting gods have a tendency to give the legends empty,
cruel endings. The final international appearances of figures like Zinedine
Zidane and Don Bradman was arguably their nadir. Roy Keane didn’t even get the
chance (the SPL counts only as oblivion). Looking through the statistics, the
most fitting end for one of the finest rugby players ever would be a two point
defeat in the Stade de France. We might be used to the pain of defeat, its
regularity might soften the potential blow to us, but that’s just another Irish
trait alien to the gargantuan Brian O’Driscoll.

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Keep an Eye on... Emre Can

Labelled "the most complete player at his age I have ever seen" by German under-17 chief Steffen Freund, the barrel-chested, naturalised German captained his multicultural peers at the Under-17 World Cup in Mexico this Summer. While comparisons with Michael Ballack may seem lazy, they're not totally inaccurate, although Can is a more technically astute player, highlighted by his goal against the home team in the semi-final defeat in Latin America. Should his development continue he may well burst into the Bayern Munich first team in the future.